Copy Protection and the RIAA

I really despise the copy protection that is slowly creeping onto today's music CDs. Just today someone I know was having trouble, via iTunes, ripping her purchased copy of Amerie's Touch to mp3 files (proving to me that these schemes are only good at foiling the people who buy the music, not the the music pirates). iTunes simply didn't want to recognize the CD.

Research revealed that this disc has copy protection on it that's activated when Microsoft Windows attempts to "AutoPlay" a CD (Velvet Revolver's Contraband has the same protection). I disabled AutoPlay on the computer, but iTunes still didn't seem to want to recognize the disc. My guess is that iTunes has a "feature" in it which prevents it from being used for ripping music CDs that have copy-protection software on them. There's probably a special data area on the disc that iTunes checks for an "I'm copy protected!" flag.

I got around all of this by using Exact Audio Copy to rip the music off. I then made her:

1. Mp3s.
   
2. A non-copy protected CD of the music (in case she wants to make her own mp3s again in the future).
   

Performing this service made me oh so happy!